Poet Karren LaLonde Alenier as author of The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas continues with her operatic proclivities as she launched her latest poetry collection The Anima of Paul Bowles in Los Angeles in 2016. Amy King saaid, Anima “makes a lyrical dive into the historical corpus of two major 2oth-century writer/artists.” More info: karren@alenier.com.

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Tuesday, April 16, 2013

BPR LIT TRIP 16 with Nick McRae

It may have been a whim on which the world—

the universe—was spoken into matter.

These are the opening lines of Nick McRae’s poem “Genesis,” one of five published in the Birmingham Poetry Review
volume 40. The idea that the world or the universe could have blossomed from
words spoken attracted the Steiny Road Poet’s attention because this week the
poems she will choose for review will contain emphasis on words, names, and the
writing of poetry. What she realizes now
is this thought most likely refers to the New
Testament John 1:1 “In the beginning was the word…” and as she stated in BPR Lit Trip 11 about Ricardo
Pau-Llosa’s “God-Is-Love Man,” she isn’t a Christian and has limited
understanding of the New Testament.
However, what she does know is John 1:1 connects with Genesis in the Old Testament.

McRae’s “Genesis” is a variant of the envelope sonnet
organized as two envelope quatrains in one octave (a stanza of eight lines) using
this rhyme pattern: abbabccb and a sestet in this rhyme pattern: defdef. The
end words are:

world/matter/master/gnarled/feather/cast/grassed/weather//

fall/ confused/spears/swell/bruised/years.

Although McRae begins with iambic pentameter, he does not
sustain it and the lines are often eleven syllables long. Nonetheless, the poem
presents in a more traditional sound pattern than Ed Balbo’s nonce sonnet
“Advice from a Friend.” The Steiny Road Poet suspects that McRae’s use of Biblical words and phrases,
the tighter control over the metrical feet, and the introductory use of iambic
pentameter augmented by mostly near rhymes throughout is what achieves this
illusion versus Balbo’s more conversational tone in part due to word choice,
variable syllable counts by line and near rhymes that occasionally strain the
ear, not to mention the visual versus oral on the last two end words alone/gone. This is not to say one poem is
better than the other, but only to comment on different approaches contemporary
poets are employing in the creation of sonnets.

McRae’s poem has some eloquently stated ideas like lines
three through five:

Then we happened and made ourselves the master

of it all—the beautiful and gnarled

collection: root and flesh, baleen and feather.

Here mankind comes into existence without fanfare and takes
charge—master of it all—of the other
living organisms as represented by root
and flesh, baleen and feather. What an interesting way to point to plants
and animals, including whales (baleen is a whale jawbone) and birds.

After the masters of it all (Adam and Eve’s names are never
mentioned in the poem) are thrown out of Paradise, the separation occurs and is
set down this way in lines nine and ten:

But separate as we were—the rise and fall

of towers and tribes, our languages confused,

By line 12, reference is made to the covenant God strikes
with Noah. Here are the last three lines of the sonnet:

we found a covenant in the green sea’s swell,

the cypress with its windy voice, a bruised

body entwined with ours, our numbered years.

Because McRae has only 14 lines to work with and Genesis is
50 chapters long, compression and suggestion are the only way he can advance
through this eventful First Book of
Moses where the descendants of Abraham die before they can escape Pharaoh and
Egypt to gain entrance into the Promised Land. The Steiny Poet guesses that a “bruised/body
entwined with ours” might refer to Jacob wrestling with the angel after Jacob
has stolen his brother Esau’s birthright. It’s an interesting challenge Nick
McRae has set for himself.

About the Poet

is author of seven collections of poetry, including Looking for Divine Transportation (The Bunny and the Crocodile Press), winner of the 2002 Towson University Prize for Literature, and her latest, The Anima of Paul Bowles from MadHat Press. Her poetry and fiction have been published in such magazines as: the Mississippi Review, Jewish Currents, and Poet Lore. Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On, her opera with composer William Banfield and Encompass New Opera Theatre artistic director Nancy Rhodes premiered at New York City’s Symphony Space Leonard Nimoy Thalia in June 2005. She writes a monthly column on opera for Scene4 Magazine at scene4.com.